Twitter is useful, imho, for two things: 

1. As a way to share links. 

2. As a way to speak your mind. 

These days I use it almost exclusively for #1. Very little of #2.  

People just aren't that interested in what other people think. And it's damned difficult to speak your mind 140 characters at a time. Most of the time you can anticipate in advance what the misunderstandings will be, and self-edit. Then self-censor. Why bother going through all that michegas. 

But as a link-sharing tool, it is really excellent. 

How you can get the links I send through Twitter... 

1. You can, of course, read them in Twitter. 

2. There's also a site that has all my links going back to April 2009. 

3. Recently I started flowing the links through a WordPress blog. 

4. There is, of course, a realtime RSS feed of my links. 

5. And a Top 40 list of recent links, ranked by click-throughs. 

Then it just struck me -- sheez -- I'm mostly using Twitter the way people use del.icio.us. 

Maybe there's a lesson in there. Perhaps if we figure out how to decentralize del.icio.us, we'll be on the way to decentralizing Twitter? Maybe all del.icio.us needed was to become realtime, and it would have become Twitter? 

BTW, I often have the same idea about Flickr. It's a gem, with a huge and influential user base, to this day. With a little love and care it might blossom into something really wonderful.  

Yes, I believe in resurrection!